Strange Tales from Liaozhai - Vol. 5The weird and whimsical short stories in Strange Tales from Liaozhai show their author, Pu Songling (1640-1715), to be both an explorer of the macabre, like Edgar Allan Poe, and a moralist, like Aesop. In this first complete translation of the collection's 494 stories into English, readers will encounter supernatural creatures, natural disasters, magical aspects of Buddhist and Daoist spirituality, and a wide range of Chinese folklore. Annotations are provided to clarify unfamiliar references or cultural allusions, and introductory essays have been included to explain facets of Pu Songling's work and to provide context for some of the unique qualities of his uncanny tales. This is the fifth of 6 volumes. |
From inside the book
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... us that just prior to his own birth, his father experienced a dream of “a sickly, frail Buddhist” with “salve spread over a coin-shaped circle in the middle of his chest,” and by the time he awoke, xii Strange Tales from Liaozhai.
... father's dream, as prescient and portentous as most dreams recounted in Chinese literary and folkloric tradition, is simply the first dream narrative in his collection to propose a precognitive function that directly affects the ...
... father-in-law, Shi is able to use his arcane wisdom to rescue him. Scholar Mi, favored by the title character of “The God's Daughter” (shennu), is asked to do a favor for her father—the patron deity of the sacred mountain, Mt. Heng, in ...
... father, Chen Ziyan, was a well-known scholar in their town. A certain Zhou, from an affluent family, admired Chen Ziyan's prestige and concluded that their families should be joined in marriage. Chen Ziyan worked hard, but he kept ...
... father. When he came to Xi'an, he made inquiries all over among the local people. Someone told him that a few years earlier, a scholar had died at a particular inn, and had been buried in the eastern outskirts of the city, but now the ...